Poem

In my last post, I shared a photograph I took in the summer and threw out a fishing line - the question being, if this was an illustration in a poetry anthology what sort of poem would it be married with? "Mountain Thyme" (pictured right) left me this comment:- "I see a long poem in which one learns that being true to oneself, never compromising your beliefs, "running against the wind," so to speak is not all bad. One might be lonely at times, but one will grow strong and healthy and beautiful with roots firmly planted in the ground."

She was lighting the blue touchpaper of my poetry and this is what has, rather mysteriously, emerged:-

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Rooted

No man is an island

But I have been an island

Salt waves crashing on my shore

Knuckles rapping at my door.

I counted the bells of midnight

With pauses between each one

And fought with hope and memory

Before the dark was gone.

And in dawn's seeping light,

I turned to face my wall

Sure that when we leave this life

There's nothing there at all.

Earth turned

Clouds of starlings on the wing

Like shoals of tiny fish beside a reef

I heard a distant blackbird sing

And sensed the molten core beneath

It churned

Like hope, like memory.

To run with the wind

To be gone with it

So many flew like kites

Their lines lost

Up and down on

Invisible air

You see such beings

Everywhere.

I anchored myself to the earth

Held on tight for all I was worth

Felt the ebb and watched the flow

For isn't this how life must go?

I looked in the mirror

And saw my face

Entrant in the human race.

Illustration

As winter winds gather in the north to turn this last full week of November from a balmy autumn into bitter winter, I give you a tree. A solitary sisterless tree. It stands at the very heart of England where Warwickshire meets Leicestershire. See how the dense new wheat which rustles around it is already beginning to change from green to gold.

It was close to the ridge-top village of Orton-on-the-Hill on June 26th, two days before my beautiful brother Paul died in his sleep. How lovely was our weather in the month of June this year. It truly flamed. Minutes after snapping this picture, I found myself in a field of rape. Beneath my boots the earth was cracked and dry, aching for moisture like an old man's weathered skin.

If my tree picture was selected to illustrate a poem in a new anthology, I wonder what that poem might concern. Perhaps not just a tree in a field on a summery day. Any thoughts?

Plusnet

In recent weeks, I have noticed an advertisement emblazoned on the backs of many Sheffield buses. It's for "Plusnet" a South Yorkshire based broadband provider who have been enlarging their niche in this lucrative market. Their headline slogan is "We Won't Be Beat on Price" which is of course grammatically incorrect. As a (former?) English teacher and lifelong pedant, this slogan grew to irritate me so much that I fired off a complaint to the company. Here it is:-

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I wish to make a strong complaint about the slogan recently adopted by Plusnet and emblazoned, for example, on the backs of many Sheffield buses, namely - "We won't be beat on price". This is grammatically incorrect. The slogan should read: "We won't be beaten on price". This blatant error gives a very bad message to school children who are still learning to develop their literacy skills and it also begs this question - if Plusnet cannot produce grammatically acceptable slogans how can potential customers possibly believe that Plusnet will get their phone and broadband services right? N.B. I would be most grateful if you could pass this legitimate complaint up along the chain of command and not simply ignore it. Thank you.

______________________________________________________

A gentleman from the company at least took the time and trouble to respond to my complaint. Here's their response:-

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Dear Mr Yorkshire Pudding,
Whilst we take your feedback on board, we're trying to get our Yorkshire heritage across, hence the colloquial use of the English language.
Our campaign aims to show some of the positive values associated with Yorkshire that we feel are also true of Plusnet. I am sorry to hear you feel offended by this.
I hope my explanation helps clarify matters.
Regards,
Thomas South
PlusNet Customer Support 
__________________________________________

Naturally, I couldn't let Plusnet have the last word so a follow-up complaint was fired off from my bunker this morning:-
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Dear Mr South,
 
Thank you for taking the time and the trouble to respond to my complaint about your "Won't be beat on price" advertisement.
 
As a proud Yorkshireman myself, I am afraid I cannot see how grammatical inaccuracy in any way reflects my Yorkshire heritage. In my view, your slogan represents a dumbing down of the English language and as I suggested before simply reinforces a typical mistake that teachers have to address every day in our schools. It is an error born out of many children's inability to easily distinguish between the spoken word and the written word.
 
I guess we will have to beg to differ on this. If your ad had said something that was very obviously colloquial such as "Ee by gum...Plusnet! They're reght ont price", I would have had no complaint whatsoever and I think most Yorkshire folk would have seen the point of the oral connectivity.
 
Yours sincerely,
Yorkshire Pudding (Sir)

So that's Yorkshire Pudding 2 Plusnet 1 and you dear readers can now finally see what an annoying fellow I really am. What do you think? Are there healthier ways in which I should be spending my time? "I Won't Be Beaten on Ranting!"

Another

My last post celebrated the French national anthem. In the resulting comments, one of my most esteemed, worldly-wise, handsome and culturally-advanced visitors - Mr Brague of Georgia USA - gave us a link to the sleep-inducing Swedish national anthem. This could become a game of national anthem tennis with visitors hunting out the most obscure, trite and unappealing national anthems of all.

At great personal risk and in the full expectation that I will be tracked down and water-boarded by their secret agents, I give you the anthem of the People's Republic of North Korea:-

All together now!

Let morning shine on the silver and gold of this land,
Three thousand leagues packed with natural wealth.
My beautiful fatherland.
The glory of a wise people
Brought up in a culture brilliant
With a history five millennia long.
Let us devote our bodies and minds
To supporting this Korea for ever.

The firm will, bonded with truth,
Nest for the spirit of labour,
Embracing the atmosphere of Mount Paektu,Will go forth to all the world.
The country established by the will of the people,
Breasting the raging waves with soaring strength.
Let us glorify for ever this Korea,
Limitlessly rich and strong.

Marseillaise

Most national anthems are bland and predictable in praise of nations or their leaders but "La Marseillaise", the long-standing national anthem of France is different. Written in 1792 as "Song of War for the Rhine Army" by Rouget de Lisle, it became a battle cry for the French peasantry during the country's revolution. Here is the opening verse with chorus in French:-

Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé
Entendez-vous dans nos campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras.
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes!

Aux armes citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons

And here's the French national anthem being sung very passionately in the national rugby stadium before an important match with New Zealand a couple of years ago:-

But what does it mean? Here, the translation demonstrates that this is not your average national anthem. It's quite literally about fighting for justice and liberty. If you read the other verses there are further reference to blood, fighting and suppression of enemies. No wonder the French sing it with such passion. How different from "God Save The Queen", England's bland and subservient national anthem. I wish instead that we had an anthem like this one:-

Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms my fellow citizens!

Form your batallions!

March! March!

Let the enemies' blood

Water our furrows

Hoylandswaine

Hoylandswaine - a Yorkshire village west of Barnsley. It clings to the Pennine chain - England's backbone. It's a strange name isn't it? "Hoyland" is not an uncommon placename in South Yorkshire. It probably means "high farm" and is derived from an ancient Norse language - testament to our invasive forefathers. The suffix "swaine" or earlier "sveinn" may refer to "Sveinn" the son of Ailric who died in 1129. So Hoylandswaine - a high farm belonging to Sveinn.

On such a gorgeous blue-sky autumn day, I couldn't spend more hours scrabbling around decorating bathrooms. Besides I needed exercise, so I slung my boots in the car and tootled northwards through Grenoside, Wortley and Thurgoland till I came to Hoylandswaine. With camera and banana in rucksack, I headed out of the village towards Guyder Bottom then on to Banks Wood, Roger Royd and Bull Haw Farm over Whin Moor to Kine Moor, the hamlet of High Royd and then back to Hoylandswaine. These are not pretty southern English names like Chipping Norton or Little Gidding, they are blunt and earthy like the area's former inhabitants and the unpromising land they farmed.

So here are four pictures I snapped today. I can never understand why Blogger allows some photos to be clickable so that you can quickly see much enlarged versions while at other times this is disallowed. If anyone knows the answer - please advise.

Village sign - in stone

Pinfold Farm entrance

Lonesome tree near Roger Royd

Sheep at High Royd

Jack

Dad with Uncle Jack (seated) circa 1924

My father's father ran a small dairy in Norton which is on the south bank of the River Derwent, opposite the market town of Malton in the heart of rural Yorkshire. There was a small stable on the property for milk deliveries were still made by horse and cart. Dad and his four siblings were all born in the little house adjacent to the dairy. The first-born was Tom whose exact parentage is uncertain. Next came Dad then Frank and Evelyn and finally, the youngest - Alec John who was always known as "Jack". My Uncle Jack born in 1917.

Dad showed some academic ability at primary school, gaining a scholarship to Malton Grammar at the age of eleven. Three years later Jack followed his example. At eighteen, Dad became the very first member of my known family to progress into tertiary education, enrolling at St John's College, York on a teacher training course. In 1935, Jack followed him to St John's, specialising in Art education. Both Dad and Jack represented St John's in rowing but whereas Dad was a decent rugby player and cricketer, Jack's other sporting forte was gymnastics.

When the second world war broke out, my father was quick to leave his teaching post to join the RAF and was soon posted to India where he specialised in meteorology and like thousands of other service personnel enjoyed a bullet-less war on the wondrous Indian sub-continent waiting for a Japanese invasion that never materialised. Uncle Jack also joined the RAF and was trained up to be a radio operator aboard a Bristol Blenheim Nightfighter.

On November 16th, 1940, after a long training flight in wintry weather the Blenheim fell from the sky - probably due to icing on the wings. It crashed on farmland at Ramsey Tyrells, near the village of Stock in Essex. The three young men on board - Messrs Winter and Romanis and my Uncle Jack were killed outright. Uncle Jack was just twenty three. His burnt body was retrieved and taken back to Malton for burial. The site of the tragic crash remained undisturbed until an amateur archaeological group unearthed it in the summer of 1975 (see below):-

I'm posting this on the eve of Remembrance Sunday for two reasons. Firstly, it's in acknowledgement of a young man I never met whose life lay before him - a career, a lover or a wife, children, dreams fulfilled and others shelved, laughter and tears, the natural progress of a full lifetime. Secondly, I'm thinking of all those thousands of military personnel who have died away from the fighting but as a direct result of warfare - training exercises like Uncle Jack's, fatal road accidents perhaps simply getting to or leaving military bases, suicides, snagged parachutes, faulty weapons and so on. Deaths that may at one level seem pointless, almost ridiculous but are a rarely acknowledged feature of all wars. They also served and their deaths caused the same amount of hurt back home as that which greeted the deaths of battlefield heroes and medal winners.